Archive for December, 2016

Chiquita Canyon, an innovative local business that is home to a 9.2 megawatt clean energy facility, continued its legacy as a good neighbor by helping make the holiday season a little brighter for children at the Child & Family Center, Help the Children, and the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Clarita Valley. Dozens of bicycles that were assembled by landfill employees and their families over the weekend were delivered today to the nonprofit organizations as part of Waste Connection’s 15th Annual Christmas Promise Bike Build program.

Christmas Promise Bike Build is a Waste Connections annual tradition of providing thousands of bicycles for underprivileged children across the country. Now in its fifteenth year, with the help from partners and local businesses, Christmas Promise Bike Build purchases and assembles bikes each holiday season and donates them to local charities. The build-a-bike program is donating more than 2,000 bicycles this year to organizations throughout the United States.

Locally, Chiquita Canyon built and delivered 70 bikes today to the Child & Family Center, Help the Children, and the Boys and Girls Club just in time for the holiday season. These organizations are invaluable nonprofit community organizations which help build a healthy Santa Clarita Valley by providing to children, adults and families.

“Chiquita Canyon is always honored and excited to constantly support and contribute to our local nonprofits,” said Steve Cassulo, District Manager of Chiquita Canyon. “There is no greater feeling than watching the children receive these gifts, and even more, seeing their faces and excitement because for some it is their first bike.”

“The Boys & Girls Club is extremely grateful for the continued support of Chiquita Canyon, not just for this but constantly supporting us in our community events,” said Boys & Girls Club CEO David Menchaca. “This Club relies on the community and its support, and Chiquita Canyon has done just that to help us proudly support the children of this Valley.”

Chiquita Canyon Landfill is calling on the public to hold project opponents accountable for misusing information in the County’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in an attempt to deliberately mislead and scare the public.

Landfill opponents re-created map from County’s Environmental Impact Report in effort to mislead the public in advance of tonight’s public hearing.

“This shows a total lack of integrity by landfill opponents by playing on people’s fears and emotions,” said Mike Dean, Vice President for Chiquita Canyon. “By extracting information from the EIR and repackaging it out of context, they are telling only part of the story in an effort to scare the public. They conveniently leave out the fact that the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) established a numeric limit to protect public health and that the County’s EIR analysis shows we’re below that limit. Therefore the project does not pose a significant impact to public health.”

In response, Chiquita Canyon released the following statement late yesterday:

“Chiquita Canyon takes seriously the health and safety of our employees and neighbors. The DEIR included a detailed forensic analysis of all possible impacts to public health using the newest, most stringent standards set by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). The results conclude that cancer risk/health risk for neighbors, workers and other sensitive receptors fall below the threshold of significance as established by the AQMD.”

In July 2015, the Val Verde Community Advisory Committee (VVCAC) paid for their own independent third-party air quality testing and review of the landfill’s CUP and permits. Val Verde’s own air quality consultants concluded there were no issues related to air quality in Val Verde from the landfill. Their analysis involved air quality testing points at the landfill and in Val Verde. Their report also concluded Chiquita Canyon is operating in compliance with all of our regulatory operations permits. You can review the full Val Verde Report below: